This publish is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
As catastrophic pure disasters proceed to wreak havoc on the property and casualty (P&C) insurance coverage sector, loss prevention stays a excessive precedence for insurers and property homeowners alike. Fortunately, researchers and innovators are continuously pondering up new applied sciences, devices, and instruments to assist in loss mitigation and client safety when catastrophe strikes.
With the P&C sector in a precarious place, balancing escalating losses and an ever-changing danger setting, know-how will play an essential function within the business’s success, and even its survival. Let’s discover a few of the most unusual, useful, and tech-forward loss prevention instruments in the marketplace for 3 widespread varieties of pure disasters.
Wildfires
Every year, uncontrolled wildfires destroy tens of millions of acres of land together with the houses and companies that stand in the best way of their path. The long-term financial and environmental impacts of wildfires are devestating and might take a long time to get better from.
As a result of wildfires usually come on shortly and with out a lot warning, early detection of most of these disasters is of the utmost significance on the subject of lowering property injury and saving lives. Nevertheless, present wildfire prevention options, together with guide watch towers, satellite tv for pc programs, and cameras aren’t practically as exact or up-to-date as wanted to detect unauthorized burns earlier than they’ve accomplished a major quantity of harm.
1. Early-detection wildfire sensors
The most recent in wildfire loss prevention know-how goals to repair these shortcomings by offering ultra-early wildfire detection. Dryad Networks, an environmental IoT startup headquartered in Berlin, Germany, developed Silvanet, a community of wi-fi environmental sensors that leverage solar energy and mesh gateways to assist in low-cost early detection of wildfires. The sensors choose up early-stage wildfire indicators like elevated carbon monoxide and hydrogen fuel particles within the air, giving firefighters a head begin on extinguishing burns earlier than they unfold.
What makes it cool?
One of many greatest challenges of conventional wildfire detection sensors is their energy consumption. Utilizing photo voltaic panels alone to energy sensors isn’t an incredible possibility in a forest the place giant teams of bushes block a major quantity of the daty’s solar. By leveraging an STM32WL (We’re not too proud to confess that this know-how goes past our degree of comprehension. In case you’re , here’s an explanation), Dryad’s builders discovered a technique to get previous the facility consumption problem and create a system that’ll run for as much as 15 years within the forest.
2. Firefighting robots
Yeah, you learn that proper. Combating wildfires is a harmful job, however with the assistance of robotics, people can combat burns with out placing their very own lives in danger. Most of the firefighting robots at the moment in use are machines that firefighters remotely management. This allows the robots to navigate steep terrain or enter burning buildings with out placing human lives at risk.
Nevertheless, buildings are designed for people, so whereas many firefighting robots look extra like vehicles than individuals, researchers have additionally developed more human-looking models to assist firefighters in emergency indoor conditions. These humanoid robots can carry out duties like opening doorways, strolling up and down stairs, and working fireplace hoses.
What makes it cool?
You imply apart from the truth that we’re speaking about firefighting robots? At AgentSync, we’re large proponents of utilizing know-how to automate the guide duties that suck up your individuals’s time and take them away from extra high-value work. By offloading work, like carrying heavy tools or evacuating individuals from an affected space, onto robots, firefighters can focus their time and vitality on their prime precedence: stopping the unfold of a hearth.
It’s just like how our merchandise take guide producer licensing and compliance duties off insurance coverage companies’, carriers’, and MGA’s plates, permitting their individuals to get again to their most important precedence: promoting and servicing insurance coverage merchandise.
Floods
We are able to’t speak about pure disasters with out mentioning flooding. Floods are the commonest and most expensive pure catastrophe within the U.S. The National Weather Service estimates approximately 122 million people are at risk of flooding within the spring of 2024 alone. Within the five-year interval between 2018-2022, floods racked up roughly $45 billion in insured losses across the globe.
Extra frequent and heavy rainfall means flash floods have gotten a bigger challenge in main cities and cities, however general danger consciousness for flooding of all sorts stays low. This ignorance means many dwelling and enterprise homeowners underestimate the quantity of insurance coverage protection they want.
1. Publicly out there, correct water knowledge
To assist the general public make extra knowledgeable selections on the subject of water security and flood administration, the Nationwide Climate Service launched the National Water Prediction Service web site in March of 2024. The platform, which leverages fashionable software program together with cloud infrastructure and geospatial know-how, provides extra correct, and user-friendly water knowledge to assist higher analyze and predict flood danger.
What makes it cool?
Whereas an internet site could not sound as cool as firefighting robots, public entry to real-time flood knowledge will be simply as life-saving. The Nationwide Water Prediction Service web site provides customers insights into the present water circumstances wherever within the U.S. Plus, with the assistance of API technology, customers can entry real-time water circulate info immediately from their very own gadgets.
Whether or not we’re speaking about insurance coverage producer licensing or flood preparation, access to up-to-date data is crucial to your decision-making. Correct flood prediction knowledge provides dwelling and enterprise homeowners ample time to safe their property and valuables and evacuate if vital.
2. Water-Gate
Once you hear the phrase Water-Gate, you most likely take into consideration illicit political actions, however on this case we’re speaking about one thing slightly extra on the nostril. MegaSecu’s Water-Gate water barrier is a literal “gate” used to dam water from flooding a construction or space. Made out of heavy-duty PVC, the Water-Gate barrier unfolds because the water degree rises to forestall flooding.
What makes it cool?
Historically, dwelling and enterprise homeowners use sandbags to dam up the realm surrounding their property and forestall flooding. Nevertheless, sandbag boundaries can take a number of individuals hours of guide work to fill and deploy and so they usually leak, rendering them ineffective after one or two makes use of. The Water-Gate barrier has a 20-year lifespan and will be deployed in solely 5 minutes utilizing two individuals and no different assets.
Serving to individuals get extra accomplished with much less is a objective the Water-Gate system and AgentSync share. Simply take a look at how one forward-thinking MGA reduced their producer licensing workload from that of 1.5 full-time employees to just 30 minutes a day with AgentSync’s assist.
Earthquakes
Not even at some point into 2024, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, shifting the coastline by over 800 feet and costing about $6.5 billion in total insured losses. Earthquakes and their aftershocks can injury houses and companies, destroy infrastructure, and convey transportation to a screeching halt. They trigger nearly $15 billion in damage each year within the U.S. alone, starting from a couple of damaged home windows to complete constructing collapse. But, as Taiwan’s most up-to-date main earthquake reveals, resilient infrastructure and loss prevention issues.
1. The Seismic-Cloaking Safety of Vital Infrastructure
The Seismic-Cloacking Protection of Critical Infrastructure, or the SCPCI, includes boring a collection of tilted holes into the bottom surrounding no matter construction must be protected to make it basically “invisible” to shock waves, type of like how a muffler dampens sound waves.
The boreholes vary from a foot to a meter in diameter and are round 150 meters deep. As soon as drilled, they flip the bottom round them right into a medium to replicate and divert harmful seismic waves away from the construction they encompass. The know-how continues to be within the early phases of improvement however has the potential to guard billions of {dollars} of infrastructure and save 1000’s of lives.
What makes it cool?
In apply, the SCPCI decreased the seismic vitality of a magnitude 7 earthquake to that of a magnitude 5 earthquake. This has the potential to cut back the injury of an earthquake from main structural, environmental, and financial losses to simply a few damaged dishes. Even cooler, this sort of infrastructure might defend a variety of areas, from a single constructing to a complete metropolis.
2. Backpack rats
In addition to property injury and loss, earthquakes also can trigger important lack of human lives. When catastrophe strikes, time is of the essence as rescuers search by way of the rubble of collapsed buildings for trapped survivors. People are at a major drawback on the subject of discovering and rescuing individuals within the aftermath of an earthquake. Primarily, we’re simply too large to securely navigate the fallen particles. Researchers on the nonprofit APOPO have a greater answer: rats. Extra particularly, rats carrying tiny backpacks geared up with a digital camera, two-way microphone, and GPS sign.
What makes it cool?
Two phrases: Backpack rats. That apart, it’s fairly unimaginable that builders had been capable of create know-how sufficiently small to suit inside a backpack sized for a rat and powerful sufficient to ship and obtain frequencies below the heavy particles of an earthquake. Coupled with a rat’s personal expertise, like their very good sense of scent and their skill to be taught and adapt shortly, your entire idea is a real testomony to the facility of mixing human (or rat) expertise with fashionable know-how for elevated effectivity and general success.
Know-how performs a number of key roles within the insurance coverage business
Whereas the primary objective of this text is just to focus on a couple of of essentially the most attention-grabbing high-tech pure catastrophe loss prevention instruments on the market, the larger lesson comes all the way down to the function know-how performs within the insurance coverage sector. Whether or not it’s on a macro degree (lowering insured losses from pure disasters sufficient to have a optimistic impression on the general affordability and availability of P&C insurance coverage) or a micro degree (enabling a single producer to onboard with an company sooner and extra effectively), it’s clear know-how is essential to the longer term success of our business.
If all this speak about firefighting robots and tiny rodent heroes has you feeling amped up and able to swap out your legacy insurance coverage know-how for extra fashionable, environment friendly options, AgentSync will help. Watch a demo to be taught extra.
Subjects
Natural Disasters
InsurTech
Tech
